


A Place in the Galaxy

by Nebulad



Series: Sea of Stars [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-ME2, post-ME1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You drop out of Spectre training and now you’re quitting your job?” Talus Vakarian was a remarkably level-headed man, so when he started shouting at Garrus he’d known immediately where his father stood.</p><p>(The same place as always, sharply planting his flag on the opposite end of the canyon from Garrus and refusing to budge)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place in the Galaxy

 “Are you in the room with your mom right now?”

“No- my room. In my parents’ house,” Garrus admitted.

“In that case, what are you wearing?” Faust really hoped he understood the flirty context. Explaining it would have ruined the mood.

“What am I- _oh._ Trying to make me blush, Commander?” he teased. He’d gotten bolder so long as he couldn’t see her; maybe even when he did see her again. She really hoped so.

“Is it working?” she asked casually, lying on her back. He sent her a picture of himself, his face very grave, and she barked out a laugh. “Doesn’t count you goddamn turian cheater! You don’t blush through your crest.”

“Damn, I was hoping you didn’t know that much about anatomy.” She sent him a picture back- just her face, with some big fake blushing stickers on it.

And glitter. Commander Shepard loved glitter.

“What am I looking at?” he asked, and she was pretty sure his sub vocals implied laughter. She’d been watching videos on how to interpret turian language and was positive she was getting good.

“My beautiful face. Blushing.”

“I’m not a doctor but I don’t think humans blush like this,” he protested.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen you do it and it has never looked like this.”

“You are a goddamn _liar_ Vakarian. I don’t blush,” she scolded.

“You do when my voice drops a few ranges.” _That damn fucking dumbass growly voice- I’m going to murder him and no one in the fucking galaxy is going to convict me for doing it._

“Shut up.”

“Something wrong?”

“Fuck you.”

“A little forward, ma’am.”

“One day you’ll be standing by the Mako and I’m going to open the cargo hatch,” she said, muffled by the pillow she’d shoved over her red-hot face. He laughed- explicitly this time- and sent her a picture back. It was the one she’d sent, only with a bunch of martian emoticons and the words (belatedly translated) _weird alien_ written across the bottom. “I have literally never been so offended. Didn’t you ever watch the vids with the sexy alien babes?” she asked.

“I did- _and_ I’m looking at a poster I put up when I was fifteen now. They look shockingly like turian women, only pink,” he admitted. He sent a picture of that too.

“Pft. Everyone knows alien babes are green humans with absurdly fake antennae,” she returned. She didn’t have a poster so she settled for scribbling on her face again.

“No male aliens?”

“There’s Spock but he wasn’t really on the same level,” she said with a shrug that she realized he couldn’t see. “A lot less cleavage.”

“I’ll pretend I understood that reference. So- not to cut the conversation short, but I did call for a reason this time,” he told her. He’d been in pretty regular contact since their not-date, after making sure his mother was okay.

“My songbird voice?”

“Human language doesn’t sound like anything avian. It sounds more like if a hand-puppet could talk,” he informed her.

“So you called to insult your commanding officer?” she asked in a faux offended tone.

“No, but I’m always up for it. I think I’m ready for pick-up now, Shepard,” he said. Her heart jumped into her throat because _Garrus was coming back._ He’d be an elevator ride away, right there to talk to her and make the Normandy a little less… routine.

“Goddamn Vakarian. Next you’ll tell me you want to follow up on our raincheck.” She really hoped that didn’t sound like she was fishing.

“That too, if you can squeeze me in somewhere.” There was a heartbeat. “Please forget I just said that.”

“Never.”

“Faust.”

“I’m going to embroider it onto a pillow and hold it tightly in the night.”

“I can think of better things to hold.” His damn voice _dropped_ again, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it (not that he could visibly see, of course, which would become an issue when she was face to face with him again and couldn’t stop that thousand mile stare at his hips).

“Oh yeah?” she challenged, barely breathing.

“Lots of options,” he agreed. “I’ve heard turians in particular-”

There was a sudden rumbling and the hiss of static, over which Garrus could hear Shepard shriek “ _Ostie d’crisse de tabarnak,_ Joker what in the _fuck_ was that?”

“Shepard?” he asked anxiously.

“Garrus I’ll call you back, I have to get to the _fuck-”_ There was a crash and a groan. “Someone is firing on my _fucking_ ship and I have to go punch their nuts into their throats.”

“Is it geth?” His heart was threatening to pound right out of his mouth.

“I don’t know- I have to get to the deck, Garrus. I’ll call you back when I’m done ruining this fucker’s day.”

“Be _careful_ Shepard.”

“I am the _picture_ of caution and thoughtfulness,” she protested. He got the urge to tell her how amazing he thought she was, but bit it back down.

He could tell her afterwards, when she called him back.

. . . . .

It was Talus that told him, which was typical. Anyone else and he would have focused all his energy on horror and nausea because Shepard had _died_ , Faust was _dead_ and she’d never send him one of those weird pictures of herself again and he’d never told her that he admired everything about her. But Talus had told him which meant he got to add _anger_ to that, because his father assumed he’d already known.

“I shudder to think what would have happened if the Normandy had been attacked _after_ they picked you up,” he’d said, handing him the paper. Garrus looked down and there it was, splashed across the front page- her face, looking irritable like she always did during photo shoots, with him and Wrex in the background.

_Commander Faust Shepard lost over Alchera in the Amada System._

He tore open the paper to the proper page and stared down (another picture of her, this one candid- he knew because she was smiling, and smiling at Wrex, and he was standing in the background looking vaguely awestruck). _Commander Faust Shepard, as reported by the pilot of the Normandy SR-1 (Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau), was spaced when her ship was attacked by an unidentified alien vessel. The Alliance has yet to release plans for a public ceremony to honour the Hero of the Citadel._

Talus watched him as he frantically opened his omnitool, punching Wrex’s name. “Yeah?” The korgan sounded exhausted, his voice barely a garble over his breathing.

“ _Shepard’s dead?”_ Garrus shouted without meaning too. It wasn’t Wrex’s fault, but _why hadn’t Garrus been told?_

“Shit. I told the humans to call you- maybe the Alliance is trying to keep it quiet.” Wrex sounded uncharacteristically… neutral. There was no laugh in his voice, no anger; just resignation.

“Well they did a bad job- it’s the front page of Cipritine’s news,” he snapped.

“Rough way to find out. If I’d known Alenko wasn’t going to call I would have said something,” Wrex assured him wearily. “You still on Palaven?”

“Yes, I was waiting-” He cut himself off. _I was waiting for Faust to call me back so I could get a pickup. I should have been on the ship- I wouldn’t have let her just stay behind. I might have been useful; not like here where I’m just stressing mom out by fighting with dad._ “I was waiting for pickup.”

“She never said anything about a pickup,” Wrex protested. Garrus’ gut went cold. _Someone is firing on my fucking ship._

“I only asked for one- I was waiting for her to call me back. She had to hang up because someone was firing on the ship,” he murmured. Her last moments alive had been talking with him- he hadn’t even… if he’d known she wasn’t going to make it he would have _said_ something. “How did… what happened?” he asked.

“Hell, I don’t know much Vakarian. I was in the cargo hold when the ship started shaking and red alert got dropped. Went down into engineering to grab Tali and hauled ass up to the escape pods,” he admitted. “The way Joker and Kaidan say though… apparently Joker wouldn’t leave the ship. He wanted to outmaneuver the enemy but Faust wouldn’t leave him behind. They fired again before Shepard could get into the pod and she was already spaced when she launched Joker out. After that….”

“What?” he demanded.

“The comm was on,” Wrex admitted. “She suffocated. Debris must have cut her air supply pipe.”

Garrus dropped into on of the chairs in his kitchen _(he remembered wanting to bring Faust home to visit just to see her tiny human body dwarfed in a turian chair)_ and rested his head in his hands. Talus had left the room- no doubt to talk to mom, to tell her that Garrus hadn’t known. He wasn’t _sorry_ she was dead- he hadn’t liked her. From the moment he’d caught Garrus and Shepard going out that night he’d been suspicious, and it drove Garrus _crazy_ to have to explain that he hadn’t had a chance in hell with Faust. He was surprised to have gotten _that_ far.

And that was selfish because she’d been… such a good friend. She’d been there for him, _listened_ to him when he said he was frustrated with his options instead of dismissing him as a hothead who needed to grow up and keep his mouth shut. She’d considered his feelings, considered _him_ as a person; when he suggested things in the field she took his opinions into consideration. She was just… nothing like he’d expected.

And she was gone.

. . . . .

“You drop out of Spectre training and now you’re quitting your job?” Talus Vakarian was a remarkably level-headed man, so when he started shouting at Garrus he’d known immediately where his father stood.

_(The same place as always, sharply planting his flag on the opposite end of the canyon from Garrus and refusing to budge)_

“Spectre training was a waste of time,” he admitted. Being a Spectre didn’t put you above the law, and there was just as much red tape to deal with as there’d been in C-Sec.

_(He’d really underestimated the amount of galactic crimes they’d technically committed back on the SR-1, which wasn’t surprising since he’d stopped counting after helping her steal the Normandy)_

“And yet when _I_ said that, I was being unsupportive,” Talus snapped. Garrus gritted his teeth because he _had_ been being unsupportive. He’d been an asshole about it because he didn’t like Spectres and didn’t care to understand why Garrus felt he had to do this. “That doesn’t explain why you’re quitting your job.”

“Look _around_ , dad!” he snapped. “I just spent _how long_ busting my ass with Shepard to catch Saren and everyone is _still_ ignoring the Normandy crew when we tell them that Saren and the geth were _pawns.”_

“It’s your job to protect people no matter _what_ they think of you,” Talus reprimanded with no small amount of disappointment.

“This isn’t _about me,_ dad-”

“No, it’s about the dead Spectre.” Garrus clenched his fists because _nothing was ever about what he wanted._ It was always someone influencing Garrus, someone trying to reshape him into something Talus didn’t like- as if he’d _ever_ been someone his father approved of.

“I’m not quitting C-Sec because of Shepard.”

“You’re quitting because you think you could be a better cop if you just didn’t listen to rules or reason like she didn’t.”

“I’m quitting because nothing gets _done_ here! Petty criminals are allowed to walk to save space for high profile criminals, who are allowed to walk because they’ve all got the Council in their pockets. I’m sick of it,” he practically gnashed out through his teeth.

“So your solution is to just give up?”

Garrus stormed out of the office and Talus wouldn’t realize that his son hadn’t _really_ given up on fighting crime until he got the call about the dead drug dealer that had been allowed to go free. The human had been beaten beyond all recognizability and thrown in front of a C-Sec office in the lower wards just before dying of his wounds. They couldn’t track who did it- almost like the perp knew exactly where detectives would start looking.

He hadn’t heard from Garrus for two weeks, and wouldn’t again for two years.

. . . . .

Garrus sat in silence, on watch with Cachia (the team’s batarian tech expert), thinking over the past year and a half. He arrived on Omega and found something that suited _him._ C-Sec had been for his father, to try and win his approval by being the best detective he knew how to be; unfortunately, he didn’t know how to be the kind of man his father would approve of, and making himself miserable to pretend he was didn’t suit him.

Spectre training had been for Shepard, to nurture his crush on her. He’d thought that becoming a Spectre would allow him to become the sort of man that could impress her- not the slightly awkward, starstruck cop that had haunted her cargo bay and tried to build up courage to tell her she was amazing, but a man who doled out justice on his own terms.

In the end, that had made him unhappy too. He underestimated just how much of Shepard’s loose canon attitude was _her_ and not the Spectre status, and overestimated the actual influence he’d have as one of the galaxy’s elite. Forcing himself to take on the burden of service to the Council in her honour wouldn’t have made him the sort of person _he_ wanted to be.

“Blue Suns, two o’clock,” Cachia whispered, her voice barely carrying. Garrus saw them and held up his hand to keep her still. Aiming down his sight, he rewarded the mercs’ curiosity with two clean headshots, relieved when backup didn’t come pouring out.

“Send Sidonis out for the bodies,” he ordered. Omega was what suited _him;_ helping people on his terms, getting concrete results that made a tangible difference. Children stayed out a little later to play, civilians were less afraid to venture out at night, and everyone knew that there was an Archangel watching over them even when bad things _did_ happen.

It was never about _him._ He didn’t need recognition, and he didn’t need the whole world hanging onto everything he said. He needed to help people, and if the Citadel didn’t want his help then he knew there were others who _needed_ it. Aria, as indifferent and violent as she was, was even willing to entertain his warnings about the Reapers. She didn’t _do_ much, but when she said she was thinking about it, Garrus knew that she meant it.

 _Vigilante_ hadn’t really been a goal growing up, but with no Shepard to lead and with his father trusting regulations more than his own damn son, Omega suited him _fine._

**Author's Note:**

> so have I told yall lately how distasteful I find "Garrus goes to Omega to die" fics? Yall know by now I'm generally not a fan of fics that take massive character plot points and attribute then to the LI- not a fan of Fenris realizing he's free by the power of Hawke's junk, and not a fan of everyone implying that Garrus goes to Omega in the hopes that he'll die and be reunited with Shepard.
> 
> This started as a sad sort of Shepard death fic and I kind of hope it turned into something that explains Garrus' character development in the years where Shep was dead: how he went from hesitant and kind of fanboy cop who wants an opportunity to say "fuck the rule", to a guy sniping people from his balcony because an entire station's worth of mercenaries are pissed off being he's such a good person. There's a change in Garrus that doesn't get explored.


End file.
